Customer Strategy
Customer Strategy
 
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Customer Due Diligence

Customer Due Diligence is an investigation into an organization’s customers, market potential and risks.

Using specialized tools to analyze and map the customer’s situation and their motivation for purchase, investment or engagement.

A method designed to look at the organization through the eyes of the customer. To qualify the existing market assessment and identify new drivers for value creation and wealth.

Factoring in new digital opportunities, understanding emerging customer demand patterns and taking into account possible competition from converging industries / asymmetric challenges.

 

Markets are not defined by customer characteristics, but by customer situations and motivation 

“The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer” - Peter Drucker

To understand the customer we need to relate to the abilities, emotions and activities of the situation surrounding the product - and add deliberate value to it. Making it better, becoming indispensable as a value provider, and gaining ownership through direct relations with them over time.

To understand this we need to accept that products are worthless. And only become valuable as they are introduced to a situation where they are relevant. That brands aren’t product providers, but value providers.

“.. understanding the customer turns out to be the wrong unit of analysis. You really want to understand what causes the customer to buy the product and pull it into their lives. And what causes us to buy a product is we have a job to do and we have to go out and find something to buy to get the job done. Understanding the job rather than understanding the customer is what you really need to understand because then you can improve it [the product].“ - Clayton Christensen, Competing against luck

  • What are the circumstances surrounding the customer?
  • How are they perceiving the context (what motivates them)?
  • What are they trying to accomplish (what solutions are going to help them)?
  • How are they approaching their goals (how do they measure value)?
  • With what means and technologies are they trying to achieve which progress or overcome struggles (what are new unseen opportunities)?

 
 

Customer Due Diligence - Outcomes

Customer Due Diligence offers the following outcomes.

 
 
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customer perspective

“Our imagination is limited by the tools we use to understand the world?” - Helge Tennø

Organizations operate inside a limited solution space. They look for ideas inside the boundaries of their available insights and experiences. The dilemma is that companies seemingly thirst for knowledge but at the same time thrive in certainty?

Customer Perspective tries to help the organization get under the skin of the customer and see the world through their eyes. Their priorities, language, options and values. And it helps the organization use this insight to increase their own solution space when trying to find new answers to hard questions..

 
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customer opportunity / risk assessment

Companies are prone to unconsciously hold a limited view of their future. Seeing the world from a technology, market or product perspective creates a narrow frame of reference where new wealth opportunities are easily overlooked. Doubling down and settling for certainty rather than curiosity becomes a major hurdle. Especially if core components in the value chain is under pressure as a result of digitization.

Tapping into the customers world view enables the company to connect new dots, see new roles and forms of value creation, and explore different means to unleash its potential. Understanding the business as a part of something larger and more interconnected than the industry mindset alone allows it to be.

Customer opportunity / risk assessment looks at the world through the eyes and understanding of the customer and imagines how the technology/product or service can be applied to produce wealth. It then uses a selection of specialized tools to articulate these risks / opportunities to assist the organization in making decisions and taking action.

 
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customer strategy

Customer Due Diligence is key to informing the Customer Strategy process for agile organizations. 

In a world where the only thing certain is uncertainty a fail-safe culture of processes, planning and strategy is suffocating organizations ability to compete. There is no lack of talent, imagination or initiative. What organizations need is to develop a culture of experimentation with an accompanying toolbox.

Customer Strategy is a customer driven business strategy fit for the agile organization. It helps accomplish business objectives through planning, running and continuously adapting to customer response and feedback. It’s a strategic approach where experimentation, exploration and flexibility is key. Not compromising on the business objectives but having an agnostic perspective on what it takes to produce value in industries with a large degree of uncertainty.

 

Tools

Customer Due Dilligence is always a tailored process based in the organization, industry and market. Below is a selection of some of the tools used in previous customer projects.

JOBS-TO-BE-DONE
An approach for getting to the root customer insight in order to improve your products. Jobs-to-be-done argues that customers buy products because they have a job to do in their life (achieve progress or overcome struggle in a given situation) and they hire products to help them do this job and achieve a certain outcome.

21st CENTURY READY
What are the questions organizations should be asking themselves to assess their ability to become a 21st century organization? The canvas attempts to facilitate a discussion on approach / mindset, technology, organization, business and customer strategy.

VALUE CHAIN DISRUPTION
Companies aren’t disrupted, components in the value chain are. Disruption is either the consequence of new technology, business models or changes in customers demand patterns. Teams need a tool to systematically examine and evaluate the entirety of their business strategy (divided into its components) to find where to look and build scenarios for how to react.

More coming soon …

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POTENTIAL RISK / OPPORTUNITY MODEL
The Risk / opportunity model visualizes every trend in regards to its potential risk and opportunity.

 
 

Case Study

Coming soon…

How are technologies influencing the customer behavior and which new business opportunities are emerging from this?

How are technologies influencing the customer behavior and which new business opportunities are emerging from this?